Once Galileo got their dander up, they did, indeed, go too far in putting the works of both Galileo and Copernicus on the Index. There has clearly been an anti-scientific movement within the Catholic Church. My point is that the dispute arose from personal disputes and depended on who got into power. The opposition did not derive from Dotrine. No Council or Synod was ever issued for terracentrism. It was not doctrine.
From White on Roberts:
Roberts jumped on Pius IX’s “infallibility” program with both feet. As soon as Pius IX rammed Infallibitlity through the First Vatican Council in 1869, Roberts (working in the peculiar milieu of a Catholic in Anglican England) wrote a whole series of tracts ascribing papal infallibity to all sorts of papal declarations. He was routinely shot down by his contemporaries in the Catholic Church and none of his declarations were ever accepted as having truly discovered an infallible statement.
The trial of 1616 declared against the evidence that Galileo was in jeopardy of heresy. That was not a teaching of the church. Once the second trial began, the Holy Office picked up the (possibly forged) insertion in the trial folder and propagated that nonsense.
However, they were (over)reacting to Galileo’s demand that they publish his unproven and error filled theory as Truth. They were not defending any earlier statement by the Magesterium.
(Note, that Roberts was out of line even using his own logic, as the books of both Galileo and Copernicus had already been removed from the Index by the time he was making his futile case. In fact, in 1822, the church bestowed an imprimatur on a book portraying the Copernican heliocentrism as fact, not hypothesis–16 years prior to the dicovery of the parallax that proved heliocentrism and 48 years before Roberts published his diatribe.)
tomndebb seems to feel that if he calls a position erroneous often enough, it will magically become wrong.
In the medieval period, the geocentric model was indeed part of Christian doctrine in the western world.
There is simply no way in which a sufficiently complicated geocentric model can ever be shown to be contradictory with observation. The heliocentric and geocentric models can both predict the behavior of orbiting bodies to the same level of precision. The reason the heliocentric model is now acknowledged to be correct is for reasons of simplicity, elegance, and basic logic. tomndebb’s recurring claim that stellar parallax allows us to determine which model is correct is baseless, and shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the scientific process.
Pope Urban himself told Galileo that observation could not be a guide to truth, as God could make the world appear to be whatever He liked without violating the truth of what the world really was. This is utterly incompatible with scientific rationality.
TVAA seems to feel that if he insists on a position, and fails to document it often enough, it will magically become right.
You have (after multiple ignored requests) finally shown up with something–that does not support what you claim.
Geocentrism was the worldview from that period that was understood by most people and upon which most people based their cosmologies. It was not doctrine. If it had been doctrine, Bellarmine could not have been able to say that the church would have to reconsider some aspects of scripture in light of a proof of heliocentrism. The subject would have been closed.
Basically, you are just restating that you have no evidence that it was doctrine. Thank you.
If it wasn’t doctrine, Galileo couldn’t have been prosecuted for attempting to change Christian doctrine.
Are you truly so blind that you can’t see the obvious? Catholicism embraced the geocentric position because it seemed to reflect their theological position.
There can’t be a definitive proof of the heliocentric theory because its predictions are equivalent to geocentric theory. Bellarmine’s statements are irrelevant.
Finally, Galileo was punished by being put under house arrest and prevented from publishing. His last (and arguably greatest) work had to be smuggled out and published in foreign country. Whether you want to place all of the blame on the individuals in the organization or the organization itself, the fact of the matter is that the Church took upon itself the power to silence those who spread information that contradicted it. That is why the Church was opposed to science – that’s utterly incompatible with the modern scientific method.
**Tomndebb, **if the Popes issuing decrees and bulls against heliocentricity, isn’t good enough evidence that it was Church doctrine then how more official does it need to be to be considered such?
Sure he could. With a sufficiently skewed court, he could even be convicted of it. You are trying to create an argument based on a lack of facts and you are failing.
Facts:
Between 1614 and 1616, Galileo was charged with heresy on three occasions.
On the first occasion, the Holy Office looked at the charges, looked at Galileo’s writings, and did not hold a trial or even call him in to defend his work because they found no contradiction of doctrine.
On the second occasion, the Holy Office looked at the charges, looked at Galileo’s writings, and did not hold a trial or even call him in to defend his work because they found no contradiction of doctrine.
On the third occasion, Galileo went to the pope and demanded that the pope declare his (error-filled) theory as “truth.” When the pope, through Cardinal Bellarmine, could not get him to back down, the pope sent the matter back to the Holy Office. At this point, the Holy Office, having received the matter from the pope, decided to do something. After Galileo “defended” his theory by appealing to the motion of the tides, the Holy Office decided to shut him up and ordered him not to teach or argue the point. At that point, they included language about “heresy” that was in direct contradiction to the facts that there was no doctrine of terracentrism and that they had already failed to prosecute him on two earlier occasions because his works did not violate doctrine.
Sixteen years later, Galileo gave his former friend, the new Pope Urban, a lot of grief on a subject that the pope said he did not care about. When he publicly humiliated the pope, the pope sent it back to the Holy Office once more, where they dug out the original (erroneous) declaration regarding heresy and convicted him, not of heresy, but of violating the order to keep his mouth shut. That the order may have been a forgery or secretly placed in his file without his knowledge is a bad strike against the church, but it is not an indication that he was charged with a because he had spoken against doctrine.
Now, once Galileo had gotten the wrong element worked up in the church hierarchy, they absolutely did go overboard, banning his works and the works of Copernicus and making several other foolish declarations. However, the church is simply not the monolith that you wish to portray. It included both people who opposed scientific investigation and people who supported scientific investigation. Galileo, unfortunately, alienating the powers at the very time that the church was struggling with theological opposition in the form or the Reformation, enabled those opposed to science to exert greater control.
However, Galileo was not originally atttacked by the church hierarchy, and never because of violations of doctrine. He was attacked by low-level functionaries whose accusations were dismissed and, when he dragged the hierarchy into the fray (against their will) they knocked him down, then overreacted.
(Still no evidence of a proclamation from a council or synod decreeing tha terracentrism was a doctrine of the church, I see.)
Found here . This is a far cry from accepting that the Earth truly did move about the Sun – instead, Bellarmine would conclude that he didn’t truly understand what the scriptures said.
Bellarmin couldn’t get him to back down on this as well when he says to Galileo: In the name of His Holiness the Pope and the whole Congregation of the Holy Office, to relinquish altogether the opinion that the sun is the centre of the world and immovable, and that the earth moves, not henceforth to hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatsoever, verbally or in writing.” That was on February 26, 1616.
You’re just posting random smatterings. None of that contradicts tomndebb, and in fact is quite consonant with what she/he said: that Bellarmine did not oppose inquiry into heliocentric theories per se, but did not think the evidence was yet sufficient to discard geocentrism, and was open to the possibility of heliocentrism.
Sequential Thread titles: Iraq war for Catholics is sinful.
Catholicism, Geocentrism, and Galileo
Christianity and premarital sex
I think these three go together…
People take the current conventional wisdom of their teachers as divinely revealed truth.
Christianity is not intrinsically Geocentric, but Geocentrism was a major part of the worldview of some Christians.
Bellarmine ordered Galileo to stop, openly stated that he could not imagine that the heliocentric model might be valid, and said that if sufficient evidence arose he would simply admit that he couldn’t understand scripture. He was not what I would describe as “open” to it.
Did you read the link?
Scientific thought, as we understand it today, simply did not exist at the time. The assertions (made by Dewey and tomndebb that the Catholic Church was merely awaiting better evidence are absurd.
Not as absurd as the strawman you just created with this dishonest post.
I have never claimed that the church was “just waiting for better evidence.” I pointed out that Galileo’s insistence that his (incorrect on several points) proposal be accepted as “true” were met with the quite reasonable response that the church would not do any such thing until he had provided proof (your odd ideas that such proof cannot be had, notwithstanding).
My specific objection to your persistent claims on these threads has been to your incorrect claim that the church went after Galileo because he contradicted doctrine. The historical record shows that there was no such “doctrine” and that the church did not go after Galileo until he got in the face of two popes and demanded action, based on his flawed propositions.
If you wish to assert that the church has, on several occasions, been hostile to science, I would agree.
If you wish to assert that the persecution of Galileo was unfair, I would agree.
If you wish to assert that following the second trial of Galileo, the anti-science forces got the upper hand in the church hierarchy for a while, I would agree (although I will note that science, even astronomy, continued in the church during that period, with constraints only on the specific heliocentric theory).
If you claim that the church is always hostile to science, I would disagree, but I would let you express that popular, if inaccurate, opinion as just one more belief.
When you express two separate errors as facts, I will challenge you.
So you’re suggesting that Galileo went to the Church and insisted that it take a stance on this issue, when it had previously been neutral, had his claims analyzed and rejected because of their lack of scientific merit, and was threatened with torture, sentenced to house arrest, and prevented from publishing within his lifetime, because he was a jerk.
Your many objections to the contrary, the Church did indeed teach that humanity was at the center of the universe, figuratively and literally. I’m not sure what you think it takes for a Catholic doctrine to be “official” (a statement by the Pope, speaking ex cathedra [spelling?] explicitly saying that X and Y are doctrines?), but the Church has taken plenty of positions over the years that can reasonably be considered doctrinal. The Catholic Church de facto taught that witchcraft existed and was prevalent throughout Europe. Do I need to start citing The Witches’ Hammer to convince you of that? :rolleyes:
Galileo was quite right: the heliocentric model is the only reasonable hypothesis once the phases of Venus are detected. Brahe’s dual-centered model is far too complex. He was wrong about the tides, though. But since the laws of gravity were utterly beyond his ken, and he was correct that the phenomenon couldn’t be explained at all with current theories, this seems like a rather unimportant error.
The Church sentenced Galileo because he wrote his theories in a language that was easily accessible and could be referenced by the general populace (it wasn’t such a long time before when writing the Bible in the vernacular was condemned, remember) and because he refused to couch his arguments in terms pleasing to the Church’s sensibilities.
I have, on at least three, perhaps four, posts already indicated what it would take to be doctrine. One needs a declaration of an Ecumenical Council or a general acceptance by the church after a declaration by a synod (although few doctrines got into circulation from synods, alone). Subsequent to 1869, you can get an ex cathedra statement by the pope that the church considers to be infallible, but there are only two such declarations, and neither touch on astronomy. (It can be argued that the claim of infallibilty is retroactive to Peter, but the church does not recognize any earlier claims at this time.)
(As I have asked on multiple occasions: which council declared terracentrism doctrine?)
I am saying that the historical record shows that once Galileo was attacked by Fr. Thomas Caccini, and his writings were deemed not heretical by the Holy Office, Galileo’s pride demanded more, that the church proclaim his theories as true. He then attacked the hierarchy (and even his supporters among such groups as the Jesuits) in a way that forced them to deal with him, one way or another. The way they dealt with him was to tell him to shut up. When he then came back sixteen years later and again attacked the hierarchy (under a different administration), they opened the file, found the (possibly spurious) instruction telling him to shut up, and convicted him of breaking the rules.
If your proposal that they were out to get him was correct, you need to explain why his works were vetted by the Holy Office on two separate occasions and found to not be in conflict with the church, and that they only began muttering heresy after he attacked the pope. If they were so intent to suppress him, why did they pass up two perfectly good opportunities to silence him before he made a pest of himself and called the attention of all of Europe to the affair?
Several points: the Catholic Encyclopedia’s article on Galileo describes Copernicus’ ideas as a “doctrine”. It also states the following:
In short, geocentrism was never irreversibly and “infallibly” into Catholic dogma. Nevertheless, it was actively taught by the Church.
The whole problem here is that the Church didn’t object to heliocentrism as a purely theoretical and computational approach, they objected to any consideration of heliocentrism as an actuality.
No, for the umpteenth billion time, the Church objected to the consideration of heliocentrism as an actuality without sufficient proof that it was correct. Galileo did not provide such proof; his model of the universe, based as it was on perfectly circular orbits, left gaping holes to be explained, holes which Brahe’s model handled better.
I don’t see why you’ve got such a hard-on over this. No one is saying that the Church acted admirably. There is much to criticize the Church over regarding the Galileo affair. All we’re saying is that the events were not so cut-and-dried as popular myth makes them out to be. The church was not monolithically opposed to the exploration of heliocentrism, and Galileo was not tried simply because he was a “free thinker” who was examining the universe in a way that challenged religious doctrine. Like most of history, the real story is decidedly more nuanced than the kindergarten version.
Brahe’s model worked better for the same reason that the epicycle model worked better: it had been refined more.
As a matter of reasoning, Brahe’s model is a dismal failure. It offers absolutely no explanation for why everything should rotate around the Sun except for the Earth. It’s insanely difficult to actually use, requiring massive amounts of calculations. And it gives the same results as the heliocentric model – as is logically necessary, since motion is a relative concept.
The Church would not permit anyone to consider the heliocentric model as anything but a computational gimmick. It’s as if they had said, “It’s just fine for you to draw up maps and calculate your position as if the world were roughly spherical, but claiming that the world isn’t a flat plane is not permitted!”
Galileo knew perfectly well that Brahe’s model was a heliocentric system whose frame of reference (to use modern terminiology) was set on Earth. He was just honest enough to admit that freely and in public.
(Brahe’s model was also full of ad hoc “corrections” that we now realize compensated for the elliptical nature of the planetary orbits. These changes were introduced because the purely theoretical model (which used circles, just as Galileo’s did) didn’t give correct results.)
Exactly true. In fact, it uses the word “doctrine” throughout the piece to mean the published theories of anyone: Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, and Foscarini. In fact, the word doctrine is never used in this article to refer to the Magisterium of the church. I do not know why Gerard chose the vocabulary he did, but he is clearly not using the word in the sense that I have been using it at all. The passage you quoted essentially says that the popes cited never expressed an infallible position on any theory–in fact, once could replace the word doctrine by the word theory throughout the entire article and not change the meaning of any sentence.
The church simply never held terracentrism as a doctrine (a teaching of the truth) throughout its history. References to earth as the center of the universe are simple assumptions held by all people, not expressed truths or matters of faith.
(And if it was supposed to have been such a matter of faith,why did the Holy Office pass up two opportunities to go after Galileo before he began to badger the pope?)